falloutfanonfandomcom-20200222-history
Rebecca Ryder
'''Rebecca Ryder' is a freelance mercenary for hire, formerly a soldier-of-fortune working for Talon Company. Originally hailing from the Capital Wasteland, Ryder has lived a life filled with harshness and violence, and has in recent years proven to be one of the most fearsome killers in the wastes. Presently, she active in the Commonwealth, living in Diamond City and working as a hired gun, selling her services to the highest bidder. Biography Early Life Rebecca Ryder was born on March 26, 2261. Like the majority of those living in post-nuclear America, Ryder spent her entire childhood living in poverty. She was the only child of a family that lived in a small, nameless settlement out on the northern outskirts of the Capital Wasteland, and was treated more as an unwanted mouth to feed than a child. Her father, like many who lived in the settlement, was a raider and he was very abusive, even toward Ryder’s mother who was too broken and mentally weak to do anything about it. Every day her father would go out with most of the people living in the settlement, raiding, and pillaging, and then every night he would come home with the stench of alcohol on his person, and then beat on his daughter and/or his wife. His abuses were at the point where his daughter would often hope that he and the rest of the raiders in the settlement would run afoul of either the Brotherhood or a group they believed was easy prey but would have proven otherwise. Her mother was once a trader's daughter whose caravan ran afoul of the raiders. The rest of her family was murdered by the raiders, and she was forced into becoming the wife of the raider who would become Ryder's father. She quickly became pregnant with Ryder, and since "marrying" her abusive husband she had become a deeply cynical woman, but she still loved her daughter despite her being a child of rape. After Ryder was born, her mother once attempted to escape her husband with her, but she was quickly tracked down and punished for her escape attempt, harshly enough that she was discouraged from any future attempts. Not only was Ryder’s father an abusive alcoholic but he was also an awful provider. As a result, Ryder was always underfed and always needing more than she had. At an early age, Ryder came to the conclusion that if she wanted something then she needed to get it herself. She started off traveling to a neighboring settlement on the sly and taking whatever odd job that was available. Slowly but surely Ryder began to earn enough caps that she could actually know what a full stomach felt like. Unfortunately, that was not to last, as her father eventually realized what his daughter was doing and, usually through violence, he began to take Ryder's earnings away from her and then spend her hard-earned caps on whatever bottle of rotgut was available at the passed for the settlement’s bar. The years of mistreatment and abuse was damaging to the young Ryder, and it did not help that in 2274, on her thirteenth birthday, Ryder’s mother was the victim of one drunken beating too many and subsequently died in her daughter's arms. In her anger, Ryder decided to wait until her father was asleep and then she shot him in the head with his own gun. With both her parents dead, Ryder decided to run away from it all, to leave her miserable life behind and wander aimlessly around the Capital Wasteland in search of greener pastures with a gun in her hand. Talon Company In the weeks that passed, Ryder's wandering eventually brought her to Rivet City, where she met the acquaintance of Sergeant Anselm, a recruiter for the mercenary group Talon Company. The vicious mercenary organization was in the process of rebuilding, having taken serious losses at the hands of the Brotherhood of Steel just months before, and they were desperate for fresh bodies and were not too picky over where those bodies came from. Taken in by the old recruiters promises of plunder and adventure, Ryder lied about her age and signed up. She and the rest of the new recruits were taken to an old pre-war military training camp that was isolated from the rest of the Capital Wasteland and had been reclaimed by the Talons, and it was here where she was taught the ins and outs of a ruthless gun for hire. Ryder spent the next few years honing her skills as a soldier for Talon Company. The Talons' training, along with years of having to fight and struggle for what she wanted made her a great mercenary, and her superiors informed her of that fact quite often. Eventually, Ryder would achieve the rank of Sergeant and make a name for herself in some circles within the Talons. And while the adventure was few and far between Ryder indeed found plenty of plunder for the taking, just as the old recruiter had promised all those years ago, even if he neglected to mention it would often come at the cost of other people's lives. Not that Ryder would have cared about that particular detail if he did. In 2278, her squad was pinned down by a party of super mutants when scouring an old ruin for supplies. Ryder, with her leg trapped when the ceiling suddenly collapsed and fell on her, was forced to desperately fight off the super mutants by herself as the rest of her squad mates, rather than attempting to pull her out of the rubble, decided instead to use her situation as an opportunity to escape from the mutants while they killed and ate her. Whatever happened after her squad abandoned her to the super mutants was unknown, even to Ryder. It was all a rage-filled haze of blood to her whenever she tried to recall, but by the time everything became quiet she was the only one left alive. It took her the better part of two hours to pull her leg out from the rubble that had her trapped. As she hobbled back to the nearest Talon outpost, the betrayal of her squad kept running through her mind, until suddenly the young Ryder decided to turn around and hobble in a different direction. When her squadmates left Ryder for dead they taught her one important lesson: that relying on others was foolish, and the only person she could ever truly depend on was herself. After that day, she vowed to leave the Capital Wasteland, never to return, and make her own fortune. The Commonwealth Ryder traveled north, taking mercenary jobs here and there, and eventually, in 2279, she found herself in the Commonwealth. According to the stories she had heard around the campfire, the old ruins of Boston and the surrounding region was a quagmire of violence and despair filled to the brim with raider gangs and warring factions. Whatever else it might have been the Commonwealth sounded like a perfect environment for a mercenary like her, and it was not the Capital Wasteland, so that was two points in favor of relocating to the Commonwealth. So, Ryder set up shop in whatever dive bar she could find before she settled on the Dugout Inn in Diamond City, as well as The Third Rail whenever she was visiting Goodneighbor for any period of time. It was in Goodneighbor when she first ran afoul of the Gunners, the largest of the local mercenary groups. From the way Captain Forrest, one of the local Gunner bosses, was harassing her, it quickly became apparent to Ryder that the Gunners did not appreciate competition in their territory when it came to mercenary work, even from freelancers like herself. But a life of violence and a few years among the Talons had taught Ryder not to be intimidated by some thug's hot air, and so instead of acquiescing to Forrest's demands that she either take a hike or join the Gunners, she decided to send Captain Forrest, and by extension the Gunners, a message. After finding Forrest's base of operations, Ryder infiltrated the outpost through force and dropped a grenade inside the room in which Forrest was meeting with four other Gunner bosses. Six more of the mercenaries were killed during Ryder's escape, but the message was heard loud and clear. Ryder was no longer welcome in Gunner territory, not that it ever stopped her from walking in anyway, but her message gave Ryder an instant reputation, one which brought her a great deal of high-risk work. In the years since she set foot in the Commonwealth, Ryder had roamed the length and breadth of the region looking to earn a few caps and managed eke out a half-decent living. In her career as an independent mercenary, she has worked as a bodyguard, a courier, a bounty hunter, a hired enforcer and, more often than not, a contract killer. There was always someone who wanted someone else dead, after all. Personality Ryder is an independent mercenary who specializes in a variety of roles, ranging from protection, to clearing out large threats such as raider gangs and even straight-up assassination. She prefers going for the more lucrative scores and adopts a high risk, high reward philosophy when it comes to taking jobs. She is an attractive woman, but Ryder finds men approaching her irritating. She is a loner, and she prefers not to speak about her dark past. Although she has no problem voicing her thoughts and opinions, whether other people asked for them or not, Ryder has never been the kind of woman to express her feelings to other people. Because of this, she doesn't know how to express herself properly in serious moments, and may come out as unintentionally rude or sarcastic when speaking. Earning her trust and loyalty may be a difficult, perhaps even an impossible challenge, but one might have a feeling it would definitely be worth it at the end. While she is amoral at the best of times, she does try to hold herself up to a particular code of conduct when taking on a job, something she believes sets her apart from the average thug for hire who would slit their own mother's throat for a handful of caps. She spent years perfecting her combat skills and when a deal is made she never welshes on it. However, when a deal is made between herself and the people who hire her, she fully expects her employers to hold up their end of the deal down to the very last cap. Failure to do so is...unwise. She also holds certain Commonwealth and Capital Wasteland groups in contempt, in particular, the Minutemen, whom she considers a poorly-equipped mob of boy scouts and do-gooders, as well as Talon Company, whom she dislikes due to her less than ideal parting from them in the past. But above all, Ryder holds the Gunners in the highest disrespect; to her, she sees little difference between this group of so-called mercenaries and the raider gangs that plague the Capital Wasteland and the Commonwealth, with the only real difference between them being that Gunners are better equipped than the average raider. Appearance Despite her life of violence, Ryder is still an attractive - if somewhat boyish-looking - young woman. Certainly, she still has all of her teeth, and she was enough of a looker for men to be interested in her, much to her annoyance. Two small scars marred Ryder’s heart-shaped face; one above her lip, and the other above her left eyebrow. She has dark eyes, and a crown of short dark hair that has been dyed aquamarine blue. While underfed for most of her childhood, her service with the Talons and subsequent career as an independent mercenary has given her a lean, sinewy build. Equipment As mercenaries go, Ryder is well-equipped. Her combat armour was of the so-called 'Mercenary ' variation commonly found within the Commonwealth, scavenged from a Gunner commander she had killed in combat. The rest of her attire includes a pair of faded, dark grey jeans and a greyish-brown button-up shirt, as well as a scarf around her neck. The weapons Ryder carries when she is out in the wastes are rather diverse. Her primary weapon is an automatic assault carbine, modified for an increased rate of fire and chambered for 5.56mm ammunition. In addition to her primary weapon are the pair of Jericho 941s she uses as her main sidearms, and the large, machete-like knife she keeps on her person. The Jericho pistols are chambered for .45 rounds, for additional stopping power at the cost of less ammunition in each clip. For emergencies, such as an encounter with a military-grade robot, a foe in power armour or some of the more dangerous and hard-to-kill wasteland creatures, she carries a large calibre revolver that she keeps strapped to her leg. However, she is loath to use it except for when the situation truly called for it, as ammunition for the weapon is extremely rare and expensive. The most notable piece of equipment she possesses is a Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV which she pulled off the corpse of a raider she had killed. That Pip-Boy and its built-in gadgets has been very useful to Ryder, although many people in the wastes have assumed that she was a vault dweller. Quotes By About Category:Mercenaries